Gustave Courbet - The School of Nature

Exhibition Catalogue Gustave Courbet, the school of nature, presented at the Abbey Museum, Saint Claude, France (October 21, 2020 - December 31, 2021).

Several sections in the exhibition make it possible to understand the pictorial subjects dear to Courbet, inherited from the empirical and sensual contact he had with nature: “The school of nature” presents paintings from his youth as he familiarized himself with painting in the open air accompanied by his first teacher, “Père Beau” in Ornans, “Les sources et cascades” explore the theme of water multiple times represented in his paintings: from the omnipresent source of the Loue, to his discovery of maritime landscapes, “Animal representations” associate imposing hunting scenes with primordial nature where the place of animals is central. “The minerality of landscapes” arises from a precise, almost documentary observation that Courbet transcribed in his paintings: the rocky folds of the cliffs, the outcrops of rocks, or the limestone collapses typical of Franche-Comté landscapes, "The followers" evoke friends and assistants p eintres de Courbet when the latter created around 1872, in the latter part of his life, a collaboration workshop near Ornans to fulfill numerous commissions.